EVMS Emergency Medicine

Message from Program Director

Welcome to the Emergency Medicine residency program at Eastern Virginia Medical School. We are the most well established EM training program in the Commonwealth of Virginia (1981) and one of the older training programs in the country. We are located along the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay in beautiful southeastern Virginia, just north of the Outer Banks.

Our program is perfectly suited for those who desire an intense clinical experience augmented by an academic approach to patient care. Our program graduates residents who are highly qualified to enter careers in either clinical or academic practice, or pursue fellowship training. We emphasize bedside teaching and pride ourselves in our resident’s clinical expertise upon graduation. Our program teaches an evidenced-based approach to clinical problem solving that benefits the resident throughout their entire career. Our residents routinely score in the top one-third in the nation on the annual ABEM In-training Examination.

Resident clinical rotations emphasize acute and critical care. You will spend 22 months of your training in the Emergency Department. Our primary teaching hospital, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital (60,000 annual visits) is the tertiary care referral and Level I Trauma Center for the entire region, including northeastern North Carolina. The ED patient population is high-acuity, with an admission rate of 24%; nearly one-third of admissions go to the ICU. At our Level I trauma center you will see an equal mix of penetrating and blunt trauma. Our residents also benefit from “real world” community emergency medicine experiences at a Level III Trauma Center (Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital; 54,000 annual visits) and a rural emergency experience at Sentara Obici Hospital (40,000 annual visits).

Our residents rotate at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughter’s (45,000 annual pediatric visits). This hospital is actually attached to our primary teaching hospital. Our residents have a dedicated pediatric experience and rotate through the Pediatric ICU and the Emergency Department (four months total). Pediatric airway skills are refined during your two-week Pediatric anesthesia rotation. Your pediatric skills are refined and reinforced during your regular ED rotations, since approximately 25% of our ED population is less than 18 years old.

Our weekly lecture series and monthly evidenced-based Journal Club format allow for extended faculty exposure and exchange of clinical ideas and information. To augment the clinical experience, residents refine their procedural skills in both our Simulation and Vivarium labs. To stimulate both research and class team building, we send our interns to the Annual Meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) each year.

The EVMS Emergency Medicine faculty are well established and nationally recognized. Four faculty have received the ACEP National Faculty Teaching Award. Three of our faculty are Oral Board Examiners for the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM). Our Chairman, Dr. Counselman, is a nationally recognized leader in Emergency Medicine, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM). He is a former recipient of EMRA’s Residency Director of the Year Award (2003) and the ACGME Parker Palmer Courage to Teach Award (2005). Our faculty engage in many different areas of research, including: asthma; pneumonia; ultrasound; EMS; simulation; ED administration; and evidenced-based teaching. We are well published in the peer-reviewed literature.

Our program offers a multitude of exposures to Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Our faculty serve as the Medical Director for all of the major EMS systems within the Tidewater area. Faculty are heavily involved in emergency preparedness/response, including FEMA, MMRS and Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT). There are ample opportunities for more intense involvement with these organizations, if you desire. Residents spend a required one-month rotation in the prehospital setting, including ground ambulance ride-alongs. Residents have the option of flying with Sentara Nightingale, based at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. It is the only area air ambulance and serves the entire region, including the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

If you would like to train at an outstanding Emergency Medicine residency program, while living in a warm climate near the beach, we encourage you to look at our program further. Please feel free to give us a call (757.388.3397) or e-mail me with any questions (knappbj@evms.edu).